Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

2011
6.5| 1h33m| en| More Info
Released: 15 June 2011 Released
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Synopsis

The cryptic final words of a dying man lead Miss Marple and two young adventurers to a dysfunctional family harboring dark secrets.

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Reviews

CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!
AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks
Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
grantss Bobby Attfield is walking along a cliff top when he spies a body at the foot of the cliff. He rushes down to the man, whose dying words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?". He is convinced that something nefarious has just occurred and his suspicions are heightened when he misses the man's inquest, due to being sent the incorrect time and location for the inquest. In his corner is Frankie Derwent and an old friend of the family, Miss Marple.Started well. The murder was intriguing and the relationship between Bobby and Frankie, solidly played by Sean Biggerstaff and Georgia Moffett, was a great sub-plot. However, the mystery seemed to get overly complex, simply for complexity's sake, after a point and the climax, and back-story, is quite far-fetched. Not all bad, but could have been so much better.Some big names in the supporting cast but they aren't all used well. Natalie Dormer is fine in her role but Warren Clarke overdoes the alpha male routine, resulting in him shouting almost all his lines. Rik Mayall is wasted in his part, and doesn't have much screen time anyway. Hannah Murray is incredibly irritating.
markfranh Just once I'd like to see an actor look at a script and say something like, "I'm not appearing in this! It doesn't make any sense. Go back and rewrite it and then I'll have another look at it." Certainly that's the look Richard Briers has all over his face throughout this nonsense; he really gave the impression he'd rather have been somewhere else throughout. Warren Clarke looks confused about why he's even in this farcical nonsense. Rik Mayall was just going through the motions. Samantha Bond wasn't sure how to portray her character and I can't say I blame her the way her lines had been written. A better title might have been "Why didn't they stick to the plot in Agatha's novel?" as at least the book was readable and could be enjoyed. This portrayal was just a painful way to spend an evening.
TheLittleSongbird Not all the recent Marple adaptations are bad or disappointing, Pocket Full of Rye, The Blue Geranium and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side(I'd go further to say this one especially was the best version of the book) were excellent and Murder is Announced and Moving Finger were surprisingly good too. Why Didn't They Ask Evans? is not as bad as Nemesis, Sittaford Mystery and At Betram's Hotel, but for me it is one of the dullest and more disappointing entries to the series.Is it bad as an adaptation? Yes it is really. The book was a compelling enough read without being definitive, the story and characters were interesting in the book, but the adaptation does a lot of alterations in the sense that the plot is one big rambling, illogical mess with a very unsatisfying and somewhat convoluted conclusion and the characters(more cardboard cut-outs than characters) I felt nothing for. The pacing is also very sluggish and the dialogue is weak, some of it is among the weakest I've heard in a Christie adaptation actually.When it comes to the acting, only Julia McKenzie stands out properly. She is terrific as Miss Marple, with a wisdom and charm that makes you warm to her immediately. Georgia Moffett is decent too as is Sean Biggerstaff, but actors such as Richard Briers are given next to nothing to work with which is shameful in my opinion, Rik Mayall has never looked and acted as bored as he is here and this is one of those rarities where I didn't like Samantha Bond or Warren Clarke either. Bond has a very uninteresting character with some poor dialogue and she manages to be both flaccid and shrill at the same time. Clarke suffers from pretty much the same problems, and his shouting did get tiresome after a while. The worst of the performances comes from Freddie Fox who is really quite awful.Despite all these outweighing criticisms, there is some good, aside from McKenzie. The production values are wonderful, with great photography and beautiful and authentic scenery and costumes. The music is both beautiful and haunting, and the direction also has flashes of brilliance. But really, this could and should have been much better than it was. 4/10 Bethany Cox
bob the moo One of Miss Marple's friends has a son (Bobby) who was on a Cliffside walk when he discovered a dying man who said the words "why didn't they ask Evans?" before passing away. The official enquiry into the death appears to have done a poor job of investigating anything so Bobby and rather impetuous and attractive friend Frankie take matters into their own hands. Enlisting the help of Miss Marple (whose methods vary greatly from her young charges) they trace the man back as having been at Castle Savage – home to a family as wealthy as they are dysfunctional – where they find the head of the family recently dead with money to be inherited, wills being questioned and relationships strained. It certainly appears something is wrong in connection to the man's death and key to solving it is understanding his final words.It must be boring to read (it is certainly boring to write) but again I will say that it personally doesn't bother me that this is a poor adaptation of the book or that it was never a Miss Marple story or any of these things. I can totally understand why this would be the key thing to those that love the book and wider works of the writer but for me it is about the film, not the book. All I am looking for is the film to work. Things are generally good from the start – the cliff-side opening makes for a good hook – and the tone is generally better than films from the last batch. The title panel is the only thing that appears not to have gotten the memo that we're not doing the "slightly OTT light-entertainment" thing anymore because, beyond the "matinee adventure" style font, the rest of the film is quickly sturdy and enjoyably serious without being overly serious or dry in the way some of the 1980's BBC Marple's could be. So in terms of tone and potential I was sold.The cast mostly add to this well because, although full of recognisable faces none of them overplay and because there isn't one clear "guest star", it prevents you assuming that the star is either the murderer or a red herring. Marple may not be in the original story but McKenzie continues to be the main character. Sadly she also continues to do little for me. It is not that she is "bad" but she doesn't do anything with the role of note and doesn't do anything to make enough of a character to make me be able to decide if she fits the character or not. The main thing she does is a bit (slightly gormless) smile and widening her eyes – an effect that I guess is supposed to make her look friendly and thus get people to talk but to me only has the effect of making her look more like Jim Broadbent than ever. Biggerstaff is not great but Moffett is better and the two together do add a bit of fun to the trio investigating the crime. Bond, Briers, Spall, Williams, Mayall and Dormer all do good work in support matching the tone and making for a good cast.So why is it not that great a film then? Well, simply put the writing gets worse the more you watch. The Marple films have never really been ones where the viewer can be ahead of the mystery particularly easily but this is one of the worst ones for this. Not only does it not make a lot of sense as it goes along but the "solution" is a real crock, with it not making sense and not being clear how Marple was able to make any of the massive leaps she had to make to get there. It is annoying to be engaged in a mystery just to have it suddenly solved out of thin air – deeply unsatisfying. Of course it doesn't help that the poor development of the solution often means that the scenes between the start of the film and then were already feeling a bit pointless and lacking direction – I didn't understand why up till that point but at the end I realised this feeling was because a lot of what had gone before was unconnected to the solution. Suddenly a minor character that was barely on screen became the most important character in the story and even then their part in it didn't really scan. Even the conclusion manages to have one of the people in the room kill one of the murderers in cold blood (not self defence) but yet we get nobody saying anything about what happens to that character as a result – again just adding to the viewer's feeling of being unsatisfied with how it ended.It is a shame because, while I am not taken by McKenzie, I am enjoying the more steady and serious tone that the recent Marple films have had. None of them have been brilliant though – at best they are OK but this one blows the potential of the mystery by making the solution come out of nowhere and be full of so many things that are unsatisfactory, confusing or just make no sense that it spoils a lot of the positive qualities that it had. I'm not too bothered by the writers changing the source material but if they are going to do it then they must make sure that it works – here it most certainly does not.

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